A Thing About Actors

I was browsing the IMDb page for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and the top user comment begins like this:

When I first heard that Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett's new film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was destined to join the "sweepers" at the 2009 Oscars....

People are clueless. A film does not belong to actors. Actors are a part of the process of making a film, but if a film belongs to anyone, it would either be the Director, the Producers, or the Writer.

I understand that actors make the money. When was the last time a Will Smith movie didn't make 9 figures? Writers are behind the scenes to most of the public because most of the public doesn't care who writes the movie. Because of this, writers are replaced on whims and treated poorly in Hollywood. Which is a shame, because they, in a sense, own the movie. They conceive it and nurture it from the beginning, figure the whole mess out, make it coherent and interesting, and then sell it. Then, the director makes it look good and the actors give the material a little interpretation and the editors fix pacing issues... etc. But again, most people don't think of this.

I am reminded of two lines from two great film.

The first is from All About Eve. Tension arises in the film and Margo Channing (a top theater actress) argues with Lloyd Richards (a top theater writer). The basic argument is that Margo gives the boring play life, but Lloyd says what she does to it ruins it (at this point Eve is surfacing as a great actress). Lloyd says, "There comes a time that a piano realizes that it has not written a concerto." Ah, yes. Very true. The actors have not written their material--they are just reading someone's work. They are tools. As Hitchcock said, they should be treated like cattle.

The second, and slightly more humorous, is from Shakespeare in Love. Geoffrey Rush's character is asked who William Shakespeare is, and Geoff says something like, "Nobody, he's the writer." Hence, what I said earlier.

/end rant